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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Visually Based Characterization of the Incipient Particle Motion in Regular Substrates: From Laminar to Turbulent Conditions
Published on: February 22, 2018
Is the scaling of supersonic turbulence universal?
Wolfram Schmidt1, Christoph Federrath, Ralf Klessen
1Lehrstuhl für Astronomie, Institut für Theoretische Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany. schmidt@astro.uni-wuerzburg.de
Abstract:
The statistical properties of turbulence are considered to be universal at sufficiently small length scales, i.e., independent of boundary conditions and large-scale forces acting on the fluid. Analyzing data from numerical simulations of supersonic turbulent flow driven by external forcing, we demonstrate that this is not generally true for the two-point velocity statistics of compressible turbulence. However, a reformulation of the refined similarity hypothesis in terms of the mass-weighted velocity rho1/3v yields scaling laws that are almost insensitive to the forcing. The results imply that the most intermittent dissipative structures are shocks closely following the scaling of Burgers turbulence.
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